2013 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas

2013 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas

Senior consumer reporter Kelli B. Grant will travel booth to booth at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas (Jan. 8-11) to find the best, the worst, and the most-hyped gadgets and gizmos. Read her dispatches and follow other CES news and tweets here. (Photo at 2012 CES: Getty Images)

Conferences Should Be Updated for Digital Era

By Thomas H. Davenport

This is the season for big conferences—the Consumer Electronics Show, the National Retail Federation, the World Economic Forum at Davos. It’s interesting that with all of our devices for communicating at a distance, we still like to get together face-to-face. But I find it even more interesting that conferences haven’t changed very much. Apart from a few tweets here and there, we still confer the way we used to 50 years ago.

It doesn’t have to be that way. There are plenty of technological and data-related innovations that could transform the conference experience. Imagine for a moment that you are attending a conference in January of 2018. Ironically, the subject is “Truly Massive Data and Its Impact.” It’s a popular topic, and you were almost denied the permission to attend because the employee activity system at your company revealed that six other employees had already registered. Fortunately, you were able to convince your boss that you really needed to go.

After registering for the conference, all the logistics—city, hotel, beginning and ending times–were automatically downloaded into your scheduling application. They were then transmitted—again automatically—to the travel management system that your company has selected. Without any action on your part, you received a proposed itinerary with the following components:

A flight on your preferred airline, with a frequent flyer upgrade already arranged;

A hotel reservation for all the nights of the conference;

A self-driving rental car reservation at the airport (because the conference hotel was 40 miles away, and the travel management application had compared the cost at prevailing rates of taxi, limo, and rental car for that distance);

A reservation at the best Italian restaurant in the conference city—your favorite dining option—for the “on your own” night of the conference, with three suggestions for dining companions (and three alternate suggestions) who were valued members of your social network who would also be attending the conference; you needed only to touch your tablet screen once to invite them.

Your self-driving car delivered you to the conference hotel with no problems; the travel management system had downloaded your destination address, preferred air conditioning temperature, and favorite satellite music station to the car. Your only complaint about self-driving rental cars was that antiquated regulations forced you to sit in the driver’s seat, which limited your tablet access.

On the way to the conference, you noted on your tablet that the organizers had recommended some excellent sessions for you based on your learning preferences, and records of past sessions you’d attended that were recorded in your business network profile. Also, you noted that one member of your dinner party had been unable to attend the conference, so your travel management app was recommending an invitation to the first alternate.

You enjoyed the conference, and even before you left you noted that the data on sessions you attended (confirmed by your smartphone’s location certification app) were added to both your business network profile and your company’s HR database. All of the people you met and electronically exchanged contact information with were stored in your business network. After you returned to work, you received an email from the travel management system noting that all of your travel expenses—even an estimate of your hotel tips—had been submitted to your company for reimbursement. The automatically-transcribed text and presentation slides from all conference presentations that you had highlighted as relevant to your company—along with your annotations—were posted in the personal portals of all employees who had noted an interest in the massive data topic.

All these technologies exist today in some form; they are just unevenly distributed. Let’s put them to work and make conference-going a much more valuable experience!

CBS Quashes CES Award for Dish’s Ad-Skipping DVR

By Keach Hagey

CNET disclosed Monday that it had originally picked Dish Network Corp.’s controversial ad-skipping device to receive its top award at the Consumer Electronics Show last week, before CNET’s parent company, CBS Corp, forced it to reverse course.

The revelation came just hours after CNET senior writer Greg Sandoval quit in protest at the episode, taking to Twitter to say that he no longer had “confidence that CBS is committed to editorial independence.” Mr. Sandoval, reached by cellphone declined to comment further, saying only that “everything on Twitter is accurate.”

CBS, meanwhile, said in a statement Monday that its intervention was “an isolated and unique incident in which a product that was challenged as illegal was removed from consideration for an award.”

CBS is one of several media companies that last year sued Dish over a new ad-skipping feature of its Hopper digital video recorder, alleging copyright infringement. Also suing was Fox., whose parent, News Corp., owns The Wall Street Journal.

The CNET drama erupted last week, several days after Dish unveiled the latest version of the Hopper, also containing the ad-skipping feature, at CES. CNET, a technology news website that CBS bought in 2008, published a review of the new device that described it as “pretty cutting-edge stuff” that “helps Dish make a strong case that its HD DFR is the most advanced out there.” It added that the DVR system “borders on having almost everything you could possibly want.”

On Thursday, after a public complaint from Dish, CBS Interactive, the unit of CBS that owns CNET, acknowledged that the Dish device, Hopper with Sling, was dropped from consideration for a CNET award “due to active litigation involving our parent company CBS Corp.”

But at the time, neither CBS nor CNET revealed that Dish had already won the vote for “Best of CES” before being disqualified. After another technology website, the Verge, disclosed it on Monday morning, CNET’s editor-in-chief Lindsey Turrentine published a long explanation on the site confirming that sequence of events and also making clear that CNET wanted to initially disclose the results of the original vote—against CBS’s wishes.

“We were in an impossible situation as journalists,” wrote Ms. Turrentine in a statement Monday. “The conflict of interest was real—a legal case can impact the bottom line of our company and introduce the possibility of bias—but the circumstances demanded more transparency and not hurried policy.”

CBS said its stance had been “consistent from the beginning.”

Ms. Turrentine apologized to CNET staff and readers for not disclosing last week that Dish had won the vote, held among about 40 members of the CNET editorial staff in Las Vegas, the site of the annual trade show, because of “innovative features that push shows recorded on DVR to iPads.”

Last week, after CBS confirmed that it had disqualified Dish, Dish CEO Joe Clayton said in a statement that Dish was “saddened by CNET’s staff being denied its editorial independence because of CBS’s heavy handed tactic.”

Following Monday’s developments, Dish spokesman Bob Toevs said only, “It’s unfortunate that CNET is having to deal with this.”

A CNET Reporter Resigns Amid CBS-Dish Tussle

By Keach Hagey

A CNET reporter has quit in the wake of CNET parent CBS’ statement that it blocked the technology news website from considering Dish Network’s controversial ad-skipping device for its annual Consumer Electronics Show awards.

“Sad to report that I’ve resigned from CNET,” CNET senior writer Greg Sandoval announced via Twitter Monday morning. “I no longer have confidence that CBS is committed to editorial independence.”

CBS Interactive, which owns CNET, said Friday that Dish’s device, “Hopper with Sling,” was “removed from consideration due to active litigation involving our parent company CBS Corp,” as the Journal reported at the time. The device is the latest version of Dish’s digital video recorder that makes it easy for viewers to skip over television commercials.

However, Mr. Sandoval’s resignation came the same day that technology website The Verge reported that, contrary to the statements of CBS last week, the Hopper was not “removed from consideration” for the award but in fact had already won the internal vote among CNET editors for “Best of Show” before being blocked by CBS executives worried about its impact on their ongoing lawsuit. The Verge reports that the dictum came directly from CBS CEO Leslie Moonves.

Mr. Sandoval seemed to be alluding to The Verge’s revelations in his statements on Twitter. “[That] CNET wasn’t honest about what occurred regarding Dish is unacceptable to me,” he wrote. “We are supposed to be truth tellers.”

A spokeswoman for CBS Interactive declined to comment. Mr. Moonves’s office has not yet responded to a request for comment. Mr. Sandoval, reached on his cell phone, declined to comment except to say that “everything on Twitter is accurate.”

Move over, LEGOs. Two or three Cubelets are all you need for a working robot: http://t.co/14Usmob8 #2013CES

CES Reporter’s Notebook: No-Shows Still Influence Gadget Event

Apple wasn’t part of the Consumer Electronics Show, but the convention floor was littered with accessories built for the iPhone and iPad.

Associated Press

By Ian Sherr and Don Clark

LAS VEGAS –America’s largest gadget expo may have lacked some sizzle this year, but it was still hard to avoid entirely.

Even companies without a formal presence at the Consumer Electronics Show in some cases had people roaming the aisles of the giant trade show. They also made their presence felt in other ways, in some cases with announcements that drew some focus from CES.

Apple Inc. , which hasn’t exhibited at CES since 1992, for years announced some major products during the Macworld trade show held around the same time. In 2007, for example, it announced the original iPhone.

The company no longer participates in Macworld. But this year announced during CES that downloads of apps for iPhones and iPads downloads had crossed the 40 billion mark, leading to $7 billion in payments to developers since 2008.

Apple is far from the only non-CES exhibitor who chose the week of the show to try to grab press attention Facebook Inc. , for example, sent out invitations for an event it plans to hold next week.

Others that chose to take a low profile at CES were still quite noticeable.

Microsoft Corp. , which this year gave up the opening keynote speech, sent its CEO Steve Ballmer for a surprise appearance along with other staff members who appeared at events and bumped into reporters.

Another was Research in Motion Ltd. , which opted to eschew its booth presence and didn’t hold any flashy events. The company is gearing up on the upcoming release of BlackBerry 10, its latest software for smartphones, later this month.

But the BlackBerry brand was far from absent. Organizers and companies at each booth relied on the once popular smartphone with an attached scanner to keep track of attendees who visited their booths. Even event staff members who handed out initial welcome information were using BlackBerries to scan pre-printed IDs before handing out a badge holder.

No company has had a broader impact on show exhibitors than Apple, of course, since first the iPhone and then the iPad disrupted the market. And its influence was widely felt as attendees roamed the convention center here and meeting rooms in Vegas hotels.

Advertisements on public transportation often featured an iPhone or iPad, though they were being used to sell other products. The convention show floor was littered with cases, power chargers and writing stylus accessories built for Apple’s mobile devices.

A section of the show floor created in a partnership with reviews website, iLounge.com, to showcase the mountain of devices that work with Apple’s products, has grown dramatically over the years. What began as a pitch in 2009 and 4,000 square feet that sold out in a day has grown to 125,000 square feet this year, up half from 2012, and locations in various parts of the show.

“The demand to be in here is incredible,” said Jesse Hollington, an editor at the site, adding that space at the iLounge in next year’s CES is already sold out. “Everything’s iDevices these days.”

There was no shortage of attendees in many sections of the convention center, particularly the huge booths set up by companies like Sony Corp. and LG Electronics Co. Managing the traffic at times was a trial.

The Las Vegas monorail, which shuttles passengers from the convention center to the city’s famous Strip, implemented a strategy to make sure the long lines of CES attendees that would inevitably snake around the stations had a fair shot at getting on the train.

Monorail staffers would strategically lead small groups of passengers through the pay gates and down to a specific area on the platform. When the train, packed with people, arrived, the one car near the group of people would arrive empty, allowing them to board without elbowing other passengers.

But there was other grumbling that the show had not recovered to the levels of dynamism and free spending that marked the years before the recession that hit in late 2008.

One taxi driver said back then, he would be hired to shuttle CES attendees to many gentlemen’s clubs during some evenings, he said. Some nights it was as many as a dozen; these days, it’s closer to two or three, he said.

One of the coolest things I saw at #CES this year: Oculus Rift, a virtual-reality gaming headset http://t.co/1WL0i59Y

CES: Making any car (and driver) smarter and safer

By Kelli B. Grant

Kelli B. Grant

More automakers are incorporating advanced safety features like lane-departure and front-collision warnings into their new vehicles, but most such features are still limited to more-expensive makes and trims. Mobileye, whose technology is already used in many of those new cars, has expanded its after-market installation options for drivers of other makes and older models. A new iPhone app out for users offers more control options, as well as monitoring of teenage and senior drivers, says a spokesman. Users can personalize the settings to specify when alerts will be triggered for individuals drivers, and can track the number of specific warnings — say, high speed or lane departure — that occur.

While automaker-installed Mobileye safety technology often includes just a few features, drivers who buy it for after-market installation get all six of the safety features, says a spokesman. That includes lane-departure warnings, pedestrian-collision warnings, automatic high-beam control, forward-collision warnings, headway monitoring, and speed-limit indication. The cost is roughly $1,000, depending on labor required for the vehicle type, the spokesman says. (That may actually be cheaper than the cost to buy in through the automaker, via a more expensive model or options package.)

Mobileye says its systems are as effective when purchased after-market as they are when installed by an automaker. Although the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety hasn’t tested Mobileye specifically, David Zuby, the institute’s chief research officer, says studies have found front-collision warnings have led to a 7% drop in property-damage claims from crashes. “There’s no reason to think this wouldn’t perform in a similar fashion,” he says. (Automaker-installed systems that incorporate automatic braking when a collision is imminent are even more effective, though, reducing claims by 14%.) And there’s some evidence that a few safety features don’t help much. “When we looked at [automaker-installed] lane-departure warning systems, we didn’t find any advantage,” Zuby says.

Senior consumer reporter and “Deal of Day” columnist Kelli B. Grant travels to Las Vegas to find the best, the worst, and the most hyped gadgets at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show. Join her as she roams the exhibit floor for three days, with dispatches here and on Twitter @kelligrant

CES: Building a robot becomes child’s play

By Kelli B. Grant

Using the new Cubelets blocks, making a robot is quite literally a snap.

Kelli B. Grant

Each block has a different function — acting as a battery, making the toy spin, or lighting it up, to name a few. Most have been available for about a year, but the newest is a Bluetooth block that allows for your newly built robot to be controlled from a smartphone. There are no wires, and there’s no programming required. The blocks just snap together (like Legos), resulting in a working bot.

At roughly $30 per block, or $160 for a six-block starter kit, these aren’t likely to replace your child’s Lego collection anytime soon. But as a spokesman points out, you don’t need very many to make something cool. With just three blocks, we made a “robot” that can sense — and automatically move away from — your hand. Swap out one block, and the robot automatically moves toward your hand. Add a fourth block, and the robot moves toward your hand and stops.

Senior consumer reporter and “Deal of Day” columnist Kelli B. Grant travels to Las Vegas to find the best, the worst, and the most hyped gadgets at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show. Join her as she roams the exhibit floor for three days, with dispatches here and on Twitter @kelligrant

This year’s CES, which wrapped up Friday, sported lots of flashy big smart TV sets and other gadgets. But it was the souped up set top boxes that companies like Cox Communications Dish Network and Verizon Communications‘ FiOS showed off.

As attractive as Web-enabled smart TVs and gaming consoles may be, they can’t efficiently offer one important feature that pay TV providers say consumers really want. And that’s plenty of storage for the shows being recorded on DVRs. The new digital video recorders previewed at CES had a terabyte of storage and beyond–equivalent to a hundred plus hours of recorded high-definition content. That was along with enhancements to enable multiple simultaneous recordings and live TV watching on various devices in the home, and new ways to integrate Web video with traditional TV.

Pay TV executives say offering huge amounts of storage for program recording through servers in the cloud – seen as the alternative to set top boxes — is still prohibitively expensive. That’s partly because a 2009 legal precedent involving Cablevision Systems Corp. ’s cloud-based DVR requires that operators store copies of each individual viewer’s recordings–rather than just one copy of each program.

Cox, for instance, unveiled a new set-top box made by Cisco Systems Inc. on Monday but the cable operator isn’t yet planning to enable the cloud-based DVR feature that Cisco has made available on the box.

Cox Chief Executive Pat Esser said in an interview that because the servers and network infrastructure upgrades required for cloud-based DVR functions are expensive, he thinks the eventual solution will consist of some storage on the consumer’s hard drive and some in the cloud too. “The economics of the situation” aren’t resolved yet, Mr. Esser said.

Cablevision, however, has deployed a cloud-based DVR service to almost 100% of its service area. It’s the only option Cablevision is currently offering to new DVR customers (older DVR customers are still using set-tops). The Long Island-based operator says that because it’s only in one major market and operates from one centralized head end, it has more flexibility to deploy cloud-based services than national operators, who tend to have separate central offices in each major market.

Cablevision, which last year finished spending $140 million on upgrading its broadband network, says it has seen advantages in the new remote DVR because it reaches every room of the house, allows customers to record up to four shows at once, and can eventually allow for recordings to be available on other devices like the iPad in the home. Cablevision, like other operators, also is providing a lot of prime time programming on demand, which the operator said could lessen the need for customers to record shows for later viewing and use up network capacity.

Many think that eventually there will be a software solution for the entire set-top box problem–it just depends on the content rights holders, the big entertainment companies, coming around. Time Warner Chief Executive Glenn Britt said in an interview last year that he believes all DVR functionality should eventually be in the cloud, but that will only happen if and when programmers consent to single copies being stored. Until then, cable executives say that capital expenditure they’d prefer to put into enhancing their networks ends up going to new set top boxes.

10 quirkiest gadgets of CES

By Kelli B. Grant

More than 3,000 exhibitors. Nearly 2 million square feet of exhibition space. Senior consumer reporter Kelli B. Grant spent four days traveling booth to booth at this year’s International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas to find the best, the worst and the most-hyped gadgets and gizmos of the year. Yes, there were 4K TVs and smartphones aplenty, but many of the most innovative offerings came from smaller players. Some might make your life easier. Others ... well, let’s just say that they’ll get you noticed. — By Kelli B. Grant

Kelli B. Grant

GeckoCap: Kids with asthma may benefit from the GeckoCap medication system, due out this summer. It combines a tracking app with inhaler caps to monitor usage. For an estimated $40 to $50, GeckoCap seems like a smart investment to limit asthma attacks, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says kids are more prone to than adults. But unless your kid is toting a smartphone, there’s no real-time alert for rescue-inhaler use. (A spokesman says they’re working on the technology to make sure parents get that data.)

Kelli B. Grant

Hapifork: Eat too fast with the Hapifork, and you’ll know it. The $99 device lights up and vibrates when you leave fewer than 10 seconds between bites. The aim is to get users to eat more slowly, which the company says improves digestion and prompts you to eat less. Nutritionists we spoke with like the concept, but say the same effect could be achieved, for free, by eating with your nondominant hand. A Hapifork spokesman says the fork’s benefits include the ability to track progress over time.

Kelli B. Grant

TrakDot: Eliminate worries about lost bags on your next trip. The $50 TrakDot lives in your bag, and sends updates on its location to your phone. (That tracking service costs $9 to activate, and then $13 per year.) Although baggage complaints to the Department of Transportation fell 7% last year, a spokesman says the TrakDot provides peace of mind. Users can also set alerts to get a text when their bag hits the baggage carousel, negating the need to wait amid the crowds.

Kelli B. Grant

Focus@Will: Having trouble focusing at work? This free streaming music service, currently in beta, claims to choose and order songs in such a way as to help improve productivity and focus. Don’t expect lyrics or current hits. The nine channels lean more toward classical and jazz. And experts warn that Focus@Will probably won’t perform miracles — but it’s free, and so still worth a shot. A spokesman says the program has proved effective for two out of three users.

Kelli B. Grant

Climacool: Running hot and cold may be a suboptimal trait for people, but in a sports wrap, it’s practically ideal. With Climacool’s wraps there’s no need to have a freezer or microwave handy to aid sore muscles or treat a sports injury. The wraps, which start at an admittedly pricey $142, can heat up or cool down — and switch from one temperature extreme to the other — in seconds. It’s still smart to check with a doctor before using for them medical purposes, experts say. Some doctors recommend wet heat (not the dry heat from electronics) to treat specific injuries.

Kelli B. Grant

ChargeCard: “Think of it as a jumper cable for your phone,” says creator Noah Denzel, the maker of this wallet-size device. Priced at $25, one end connects to your phone; the other, to any USB port for charging. It’s not a perfect solution: Users will still need to find some power source to charge their phone. But USBs are pretty prevalent, so the ChargeCard widens your options, Denzel says.

Kelli B. Grant

Winbot: Even if you “don’t do windows,” the new Winbot does. Available in late April for roughly $299 and up, the robot suctions on to windows, inside or out, to clean them. No matter how big the window, WinBot comes back to its starting point when finished. Usefulness may depend on the weather where you live, however — Winbot doesn’t work when it’s raining, snowing or colder than 40 degrees Fahrenheit.

Kelli B. Grant

Tethercell: Use a smartphone app to control batteries for good and for evil. The Tethercell case ($25 and up) houses a typical AA battery, controllable with the app. On the saintly side, it can be used to extend battery life and warn you about devices running low. On the meaner side, the founders say, it can be used to cut power to kids’ toys as a way to enforce the “five more minutes” rule before bedtime, or to ensure playtime comes only after homework is done.

Kelli B. Grant

WheeMe: Seventy bucks will buy you an hourlong massage — or one of these palm-size massaging robots. Notched wheels provide a massage while the bot traverses your back, and sensors keep it from rolling off. It’s not a targeted or deep-tissue massage, but a spokeswoman says it beats competing devices because the user doesn’t need to do anything but turn the bot on, lie back and relax.

Kelli B. Grant

MindMeld: If you don’t mind eavesdroppers, you might let this 99-cent app “listen in” on the free voice and video calls you make with it. As you speak, it’ll pull up data relevant to your conversation — restaurant suggestions, for example, if you ask, “Where shall we go for dinner?” A spokesman says data on the things you talk about isn’t shared, but it still may not be the best app to use while discussing any topic that you’d rather not see related search information pop up on.